But some say that gap may not be as wide the statistics show – because many male sexual assaults simply go unreported.

Gloria Gonzales Lopez is sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies sexual violence and gender. She speaks with the Standard about these discrepancies.

“We live in a society that is incredibly homophobic and there’s always some kind of stigma,” González-López says, referencing her research concerning men with histories of sexual abuse during childhood and later in life.

“It goes hand-in-hand with this fear of compromising their sense of manhood,” she says. “Also, the idea that unwanted sexualized behavior that is not physically violent is at times very difficult to make sense of.”

González-López says the silence behind sexual violence of boys and young men is caused by a combination of social factors.

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